Richard Francis Towndrow

Richard Francis Towndrow was an ancestor of mine who lived in Malvern in the 1800s. He wrote botanical guides and poetry. He even corresponded with Tennyson.

His poetry was published at the time, and I’m lucky enough to have a copy of each of his original hardback books. These have been recently republished through Kessinger Publishing, although I don’t know how this came about.

As well as the books I also have some original manuscripts and photocopies. In 2004 I took time to type up all these poems, and compared them to the actual published works. It turns out that some never made it to print, so I compiled a new e-book; The Rare Poems of Richard Francis Towndrow.